[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 29 (Thursday, March 14, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1927-S1928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OTTO REICH IS ON THE JOB

  Mr. HELMS. Madam President, this past Monday, March 11, I was among 
the hundreds of Otto Reich's friends and supporters when he was sworn 
in by Secretary of State Colin Powell to serve as Assistant Secretary 
for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
  His nomination had been delayed, to a frivolous extent, by a few 
Senators who held a grudge against Mr. Reich because he so ably served 
President Reagan in the 1980s as head of the U.S. Office of Public 
Diplomacy for Latin America.
  Now, on this past Monday, March 11, surrounded by his family, his two 
daughters held the Holy Bible on which Otto placed his hand while 
taking the oath of office by Secretary Powell. There followed a 
thunderous and prolonged applause when the oath was concluded and 
Secretary Powell turned over the podium to Secretary Reich.
  Madam President, it occurs to me that many will find Otto Reich's 
remarks on that occasion of special interest. Therefore, I ask 
unanimous consent that the text of those remarks be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 Remarks by Otto J. Reich Upon His Swearing-In as Assistant Secretary 
  for Western Hemisphere Affairs, in the Benjamin Franklin Room, U.S. 
                  Department of State, March 11, 2002

       Mr. REICH. As President Bush would say, ``Basta.''
       Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for those very kind 
     words and for your presence here. I know how busy your 
     schedule is and I very much appreciate your officiating at 
     this ceremony.
       Excellencies, Senator Helms--Chairman Helms, Secretary 
     Martinez, colleagues from many years of service in the U.S. 
     Government, Army buddies, un-indicted co-conspirators, 
     friends, family, and special guests:
       I know many of you have traveled many hours to be here, and 
     I want to thank you all for sharing this important occasion 
     with me and with my family. I believe, however, the 
     delegation from Panama holds the record for the longest 
     distance traveled. If anybody else has traveled longer, we 
     have a prize for you afterwards.
       As much as I appreciate your presence, my first words of 
     gratitude, on behelf of myself and my brother, my family and 
     my fellow Cuban-Americans, must go to this most generous of 
     countries, the United States of America.
       As most of you know, my country of birth, Cuba, lost its 
     liberty to a totalitarian dictatorship forty-three years ago. 
     My family, like so many other nonpolitical families, was in 
     danger simply because of our love of liberty, which ran 
     counter to the communist ideology being imposed by force on 
     that island.
       The United States of America opened its doors to us, as it 
     has done for millions yearning to breathe free. It did not 
     ask anything in return, except allegiance and respect for the 
     laws. It protected our lives, gave us liberty and the 
     opportunity to pursue our happiness.
       The Greek philosopher Thucydides said that Justice is the 
     right of any person to do those things which God gave him the 
     ability to do. By that or any other definition, this is a 
     just country. Our nation is not perfect, but it allows its 
     citizens to do that for which God gave them the ability. To 
     say that I am proud to be an American is the height of 
     understatement.
       I want you to reflect for a minute on what you have just 
     witnessed: where else but in the United States of America 
     could the son of Jamaican immigrants rise to be the National 
     Security Advisor to the President, then become the highest 
     ranking officer in the most powerful Armed Forces in the 
     world and then the Secretary of State.
       Where else could he administer the oath of office to 
     another son of the Caribbean--half-Cuban, half-Austrian, 
     half-Catholic, half-Jewish--and charge him with directing our 
     country's relations with the 34 nations of our home 
     hemisphere. But I don't want you White Anglo Saxon 
     Protestants out there to despair. There is room in our 
     society for you, too.
       I wish all of you had the opportunity I now have to work 
     with Secretary Powell and President Bush. I have been in 
     meetings with them and with heads of state or foreign 
     ministers of other nations. And in private, in staff 
     meetings, I can tell you that you would sleep better at night 
     knowing how calm, competent, strong and dedicated they are.
       I would sleep better at night also, except for Deputy 
     Secretary Armitage calling me to ask where is the memo that 
     was supposed to be upstairs by close of business!
       I am proud today not just because I am being sworn in to 
     this office. I was proud when I was given the opportunity by 
     this

[[Page S1928]]

     country to be the first one in my family to graduate from 
     college, and then to obtain a graduate degree; to be an 
     officer in the U.S. Army; and to be sworn-in three previous 
     times to Presidential appointments. I am proud of every 
     single job I have performed in service to our country.
       Much has been written in the so-called ``prestige press'' 
     about my previous work. Some of it even true! There were 
     charges of ``covert propaganda'' by the office I headed in 
     the 1980's: the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America 
     and the Caribbean. Well, Mr. Secretary, today I have a 
     confession to make about the work of that office. Now that 
     the Statute of Limitations has expired, I think it is safe 
     for me to confirm what so many on the other side suspected: 
     Yes, the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the 
     Caribbean was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of 
     the Soviet Union!
       There are so many things for which I am grateful today. 
     Like two beautiful and intelligent young ladies who held the 
     Bible. The person responsible for their being smart and 
     pretty is here, their mother--Connie--my friend and former 
     wife, and someone who made many sacrifices to help get me to 
     where I am today. I don't think anyone has a more supportive 
     ex-spouse than I do. Thank you, Connie.
       And also here is another very special lady, Lourdes Ramos, 
     who this past weekend accepted my proposal of marriage. Thank 
     you, Lourdes. I look forward to our life together. It's a 
     busy weekend.
       Standing up here, I stand figuratively on the shoulders of 
     all of you. Each of you is here because you had something to 
     do with my being here, some more than others. As George 
     Orwell said in Animal Farm, ``All animals are equal but some 
     are more equal than others.''
       I am not going to start naming the names of those who are 
     more equal than others, but you know who you are. Since I 
     can't possibly name each one, please consider yourselves 
     properly singled out.
       I do want to thank President Bush and Secretary Powell not 
     only for selecting me to this incredibly exciting post, but 
     for sticking with me in the face of unfair, anonymous or just 
     plain false charges. I want to thank those who kept 
     encouraging me to ``Hang In There.''
       Believe me, I hung in there and I have the rope burns 
     around my neck to prove it!
       But how could I not persevere? I am an American. When the 
     Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and 
     their sacred honor to create this experiment in democracy in 
     1776, they did not qualify their words. They didn't say they 
     were going to reconsider if they ran into some resistance 
     from the British. Well, I was not going to reconsider either.
       How could I? My late parents were not quitters, and they 
     are proud of my service to their adopted country. My mother 
     was a poet and a free spirit. She was also practical and 
     hard-working, a telephone operator and a union member.
       I like to remind my Democrat friends that I come from a 
     labor union family and am proud to have served the only U.S. 
     President to have been president of a labor union: Ronald 
     Reagan, the man who with his foreign policy vision and 
     courage laid the groundwork for the end of the Evil Empire. 
     And by the way, with the help of a lot of people who are in 
     this room, such as Ambassador Kirkpatrick, Secretary Powell, 
     and many others.
       How could I quit? The memory of my father would not have 
     let me. He left his home in Vienna in August of 1938, after 
     being beaten up numerous times by Nazi thugs because of his 
     Jewish religion. He rode 700 kilometers on a motorcycle, 
     driven by his best friend, a Catholic, to the Swiss border, 
     and crossed the Alps on foot into Switzerland.
       He made his way to France and joined the French Foreign 
     Legion so he could fight the Nazis who had taken over his 
     beloved Austria. The same Nazis who would later kill his 
     parents, my grandparents, along with millions of other 
     innocent victims.
       More than a year after the French Army surrendered, he 
     boarded a Portuguese freighter in Casablanca, headed for 
     Jamaica and Cuba, and in 1942 he landed in Havana, where he 
     found work, met my mother, started a family and hoped he 
     could finally live in peace.
       I would not be deterred, also because of the memory of my 
     maternal grandfather, Juan Fleites. At the age of fifteen, 
     exactly one hundred and seven years ago, in 1895, he joined 
     the Cuban insurgents who were fighting for Cuba's 
     independence from the Spanish. He was too young to serve as a 
     warrior, so he became a medic's assistant and a stretcher-
     bearer, helping to carry the casualties off the battlefield 
     and cleaning their wounds as best he could.
       Secretary Powell is rightfully proud of his heritage and 
     his accomplishments as a military officer and a civilian. But 
     I am also proud, Mr. Secretary, that my grandfather served in 
     Cuba's liberation army under a general named Antonio Maceo.
       Maceo was the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint 
     Chiefs of Cuba's insurrection. He was a black man and the 
     descendant of slaves. Today we would call him Afro-Cuban. 
     Over one hundred years ago, Cubans of all races willingly 
     fought and died for their independence under the general they 
     called ``El Titan de Bronze,'' the Titan of Bronze, in honor 
     of the color of his skin.
       Antonio Maceo was the highest-ranking military officer of 
     African heritage in this hemisphere until Colin Powell came 
     along. And today I am proud to serve under another ``Titan de 
     Bronze.''
       Much has been made of my Cuban-American heritage. One group 
     said that I couldn't possibly handle our relations with this 
     hemisphere because I don't have the right temperament, by 
     virtue of my ethnic background. They actually put that in 
     writing. They said that I can't make rational decisions 
     because of my ideology! Well, they are not saying that 
     anymore, because I had them all arrested this morning!
       Seriously, I think it is time that Cuban Americans cease to 
     be the one ethnic group which the media still finds 
     acceptable to denigrate. How could I not persevere to be 
     appointed into what I think is the best job in the 
     government? Where else can you work twice the number of hours 
     as in the private sector, make half the money, and get public 
     abuse in the process? As my father would have said: ``Such a 
     deal!''
       I am part of a great team of professionals, both career and 
     non-career. I am both excited and apprehensive about this 
     assignment, because seldom have we faced as many challenges 
     and opportunities simultaneously in the Americans as we do 
     today.
       This is a continent of contrasts: incredible wealth and 
     unbearable poverty; freedom and repression; world class 
     literature and high illiteracy; abundance and injustice. It 
     is a continent where peasants and workers and laborers work 
     from dawn to dusk, but reach the end of their lives in 
     misery. What is the reason for that? It is not for lack of 
     resources.
       This continent has all the natural and human resources 
     necessary to achieve levels of development like those of 
     Europe or North America.
       The creative forces of all the population must be allowed 
     to flourish. Governing elites must encourage, not discourage, 
     individual initiative. People must be given the freedom to 
     produce and then to enjoy the fruits of their work.
       There is too much false nationalism and not enough 
     commitment to national advancement. Those who keep the masses 
     of the people from climbing the social and economic ladder 
     are condemning their nations to perpetual underdevelopment.
       We must battle a number of threats all at once: terrorism, 
     drug trafficking, common crime, disease, ignorance, 
     illiteracy, poverty, apathy, racism, despotism, selfishness. 
     As Secretary Powell mentioned--corruption. Corruption is the 
     single largest obstacle to development in the developing 
     world. Those who steal from the public purse are doing as 
     much harm to their country as a foreign invader would.
       Whether it is the policeman who takes a $2 bribe to tear up 
     a traffic ticket or the Cabinet official who takes $2 million 
     to rig a government contract, they are doing untold damage to 
     their countries.
       But in adversity there is opportunity. For each financial 
     collapse there is the possibility of recovery. For every war 
     there is the prospect of peace. The Mexican patriot, Benito 
     Juarez, said ``El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.'' 
     Peace, he said, is achieved through respect for the rights of 
     others. And when governments and persons follow Juarez's 
     advice and respect the civil, political and economic rights 
     of others, we will have peace.
       The U.S. cannot solve all the problems of this Hemisphere. 
     But we can help those who help themselves.
       Finally, as I said earlier, questions were raised about my 
     ideology. If you want to know what my ideology is, you need 
     not go far. Just drive a few blocks from here to the 
     Jefferson Memorial.
       Inscribed in the largest letters at the highest point of 
     the inside of the monument is a quotation from that great 
     Virginian and first Secretary of State: ``I have sworn upon 
     the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of 
     tyranny over the mind of man.'' That is where my American 
     ideology is founded.
       As Thomas Jefferson's words remind us, our struggle against 
     tyranny is not finished. Since September 11, exactly six 
     months ago today, we are more determined and indivisible than 
     at any time since World War II. Whether they are terrorists 
     in Afghanistan or Colombia, or despots in Baghdad or Havana, 
     anyone trying to impose tyranny over the mind of man has 
     earned our eternal hostility.
       Thank you all for sharing this very important day with me 
     and my family.
       God Bless you and God Bless this great country of ours.

                          ____________________